


Radio Silence

by EmotionalSupportPuma



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Break Up, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Mild Language, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24515782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmotionalSupportPuma/pseuds/EmotionalSupportPuma
Summary: It started the way most aspects of their relationship started: with Tyreen's hand wrapped around her throat. Which, in hindsight, should have been a major red flag.
Relationships: Tyreen Calypso/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Radio Silence

It started the way most aspects of their relationship started: with Tyreen's hand wrapped around her throat. 

Which, in hindsight, should have been a major red flag. But Murphy had never much cared for listening to signs. She'd been reckless since the day she was born and probably would be until the day she died. That day seemed to draw startlingly closer as the fingers tightened even further, cutting off her air supply in an instant. Her amber eyes creased open and the smug smile pulling at her lips disappeared suddenly, feeling as though her heart dropped into her stomach.

Tyreen's eyes were an icy blue, cold and hard. Not an ounce of affection or even tolerance was left. Just a freezing apathy that sent panic spiraling through Murphy's thoughts. This wasn't right. Surely their relationship was unconventional, Tyreen setting up dozens of rules concerning when and how they could even be  _ glimpsed _ together, but this...this was the look of someone who held no fondness for Murphy within her. The pressure only grew more unbearable, holding her in a vice grip so powerful that she couldn't even will her own tattooed arm up for protection. Phaseshatter was volatile enough to end this scenario completely, but Murphy could do nothing except suffocate as limp as a ragdoll.

_ How pathetic, _ those eyes seemed to sneer down at her,  _ you're a Siren and you won't even put up a fight?  _ Except that Murphy had never once stood up to Tyreen in the year and a half this had been going on. Perhaps that was what made her such an appealing affair to have, even if it was one held secret from the world. To have another Siren so enthralled that she could command them to do anything, kill anyone, forsake any moral just for  _ her _ . Something to make Tyreen feel exactly like the God-Queen she was. But now it looked to be a source of contempt, of disgust for the powerful person who had willingly reduced herself to a mutt without a backbone, all for a moment of Tyreen's time.

"Don't look so betrayed." She scoffed and tossed her hair flippantly, "Did you really think you meant anything to someone like  _ me _ ?"

_ Yes _ , Murphy wanted to sob. The tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, but that was far more likely to be a result of her struggle to breathe. Fighting off the darkness pressing around her vision was beginning to be exhausting. How much longer would it be until she passed out? How much longer until she was  _ dead _ ? The hysterical fear made it hard to focus on anything other than the hand around her throat. A mild blessing, considering the heartbreak of this scenario would have surely killed her if she  _ was  _ to think about it for more than a second.

And then, just like that, Tyreen dropped her to the floor. 

Murphy curled up on one side and heaved in as much as air as she possibly could, coughing and spitting the entire time. Raw pain spiked through her throat with every breath, but she didn't care. For one terribly short moment Murphy thought that maybe this was an elaborate joke. Maybe Tyreen simply wanted to scare her, or initiate one of their more intense trysts. But then the reality set in again and she scrambled over to the wall. Tyreen watched her with a smile that oozed malevolence. 

"Why?" Murphy rasped, the end of it curling into a vicious, painful cough. 

"You've outlived your usefulness."

"B-but I've done everything you asked. I'm a Siren, for fucks sake, how is that  _ not _ useful?"

Tyreen's eyes glittered savagely, "Not anymore."

For a second the meaning of the words didn't dawn on her and then Murphy jumped with enough force to smack the back of her head against the wall. A deep feeling of wrongness made itself known, flooding her senses with renewed fear. Why couldn't she feel phaseshatter, even though she could think straight again? Her eyes stayed glued to Tyreen's, rich brown smothered by pale blue-gray, unable to look down and confirm what the logical side of her already knew. Slowly she tore them away and stared at her left hand. It looked foreign and utterly  _ wrong _ without the tattoos curling through her fingers. Murphy thought that just maybe she could still see their residual glow.

Then her knees gave out and she collapsed to the ground with a strangled sort of whimper. It felt a bit like having taken a bullet while out fighting bandits; the adrenaline keeping her going for as long as it took for her to be safe, before looking down to see the crimson staining her clothes. Murphy couldn't drag her eyes away from her tattoo-less left arm, despite the warning bells sounding in her mind, reminding her that Tyreen was still  _ right there _ and that letting her guard down would only result in more loss. Part of her honestly kind of hoped that the bitch would just finish her off. Murphy had been a Siren from the moment she was born, what point was there in living if she  _ wasn't  _ one anymore?

Instead of putting her down, Tyreen just...left. Disappeared in much the same way that she always showed up. There one minute, to string Murphy along for just a little bit longer, and gone before anything could stick. If she sat and thought about, the decision to let her live made an agonizing amount of sense. Why kill Murphy here and now, when the pain of this all would haunt her for an unknown amount of time? There was a savagery in this small act of "mercy".

"Fuck," she balled up her left fist, " _ fuck _ ."

When Murphy needed to punch an enemy, she used her prosthetic arm. The metal had been tweaked countless times and could handle even the toughest of surfaces with little denting. If she wanted to take her tumultuous emotions out on something, then her right arm could keep up with little consequences. It would have been the smart decision. Instead Murphy bared her teeth in a wordless snarl and smacked her fist into the floor. The sting of it barely registered the first time, the second time, even the third time. She stood up and turned to the wall she'd been leaning against. 

The aching silence where her powers had once buzzed was too much to handle. Murphy hadn't even been aware of this omnipresent sensing of them until it was suddenly gone, but the space in her consciousness where they'd resided was like an open wound. She drew back and punched the wall with every ounce of her strength. This time the pain stuttered through her nerves, making her hiss involuntarily. But what it awakened was almost worse than the grief swamping her rational thoughts. Memories of how she'd eviscerated her own arm with phaseshatter, by accident of course, all those years ago. The way the pain webbed through her arm in the same way her powers destroyed. 

It was a terribly imperfect way to cope with this loss, but Murphy had never claimed to be good at handling that sort of thing. She didn't stop hitting the wall for quite awhile. Not even when the blood began to drip from her knuckles and smear across the chipping paint, not even when one of her fingers caved under the repeated pressure and fractured. The pain was so easy to ignore when she chose to think about the damage it was causing instead. How the bones of her hand must be breaking apart into little pieces, so familiar in their destruction. Murphy only stopped when her vision began to swim with dark spots, as her body began to lose its battle against unconsciousness. 

And so it ended in the same way most aspects of her and Tyreen's relationship ended; with Murphy curled up and bloodied on the ground, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> alright when bl3 first came out and we learned more about leech sirens i knew immediately i wanted my oc Murphy to lose her powers that way. originally, her story was set way way after game events and i was just like yeah, i'll make my own leech oc to fill that role one day.
> 
> then, bc im so very gay for tyreen, i wanted to write some f/f for her but couldnt really get into any ship i thought about bc of how like...there's no way any of those could be even remotely healthy. so, my solution was just "hey wouldnt it be fucked up if murphy was in love w Tyreen and that's who she lost her powers to?". this was just mildly self-indulgent canon/oc musings born from that
> 
> anyways, if you want to see my writing before its uploaded here, or just my shitposts; my borderlands tumblr is tannithvibes!


End file.
